Freewheelin' Presents Candye Kane at Lee's

Candye Kane is an American singer, songwriter and performer best known in the blues and jazz genre. She has been included in the Rolling Stone Guide to Jazz and Blues, Elwoods Blues by Dan Aykroyd, The Blueshound Guide to Blues, Allmusic and other blues books and periodicals. She also had a brief career as a pornographic actress during porn's golden age.

Candye Kane believes the universe makes no mistakes. She doesn’t view a stereotypical patriarchal God seated on a velvet throne in flowing white robes granting wishes and deciding who will live or die. Kane believes the universe, or your higher power or whatever you feel comfortable calling it, has already made decisions and already knows what you are capable of, long before you take your first step or have your first all night cry over the rejection of a girl or boy at school. The universe has already strengthened you for the most radical endurance race of all...LIFE.

In 1983, Candye was a teenage mom from the poor side of Los Angeles, it was welfare and food stamps by day, hard drug use and nude modeling by night, while at the same time yodeling and moshing alongside groundbreaking punk bands like the Circle Jerks, X and FEAR in Hollywood’s underground music scene. To help pay the bills she appeared on the covers of Hustler and High Society, whilst peddling her cassettes of original hillbilly music to anyone who would listen along the Venice, CA Boardwalk.

It didn’t take long before Candye signed a management deal with The Halsey Agency, the first agency to promote American music behind the Iron Curtain, she became close friends with Dave Alvin, Marty Stuart and Dwight Yoakum who wisely encouraged her to always be honest about her colorful past. "Be yourself Candye. It's what you're good at" said Yoakum.

It was advice well taken. Candye went on to record twelve CD’s on a myriad of record labels including Seymour Stein’s Sire Records and well respected independent label Rounder Records. She built a worldwide reputation by touring 250 days a year, wrote songs that appeared on television and in movies, landed appearances & performances on television shows like Penn and Teller, Queen Latifah, Rosanne & Donny and Marie, she’s collaborated with numerous artists that include Texas Women in the Blues with Lou Ann Barton and Miss Lavelle White as well as The Blues Caravan Series with Sue Foley and Ana Popovic, for which she wrote the theme song. She also penned and performed a stage play about her life called “The Toughest Girl Alive” to sold out audiences and at the New York Fringe Festival. Candye has been nominated for five National Blues Awards and has won the Best Blues Band Award in her adopted hometown of San Diego, CA a record nine consecutive times, all while raising two sons to adulthood.

Canadian guitarist Sue Foley introduced Candye to fellow guitar player Laura Chavez in 2007, Candyes’ guitarist was leaving the band to start a project of his own and Candye had an impending tour and no one to play guitar.

Candye heard Laura’s playing and hired her sight unseen. “I’d never even seen a picture of her. But when I picked her up at the airport, we were both dressed in skull shirts and ordered the same cocktails. We felt the same on so many topics.” Finding what felt like a musical kindred spirit Kane and Chavez were excited to start writing songs together and make good on their promise to get out on the road but the pesky universe had plans of its own.